John: In this dream, I’m affected by everything in the environment and it slows me down. When we are affected by things in the dream environment (just as in the outer reality), we become what is known as being in a state of “amnesia.” It’s like a state of sleepwalking, where we are carried along by events but have no control over them.
The effect is that it slows us down. If we are always trying to manage the environment around us, meaning we think it should be this way or that, rather than flowing with it, we get bogged down in the details and lose our connection to the flow. In this imagery, I don’t have the spontaneity to know how to keep from being thrown around or affected by the influences that I encounter.
Said another way, everything outside of us has an effect, because everything has an energy to it. When we come in contact with that energy, we can either flow with it or we can react to it. It’s our reactions – the patterns of response that we accumulate over a lifetime of experience – that cause us to spin out of the flow.
You might say that what is outside us moves at a faster speed, because we are continually trying to catch up and regroup while it just moves on. This constant state of trying to catch up weighs us down, leaving us feeling worn out or even depressed.
Then it seems as if everything is too much for us – it’s too big to handle. But there is a way that we can maintain ourselves in the flow in terms of just going ahead and touching everything in life, and letting it touch us. The outer energetic is bigger and moves faster than we do, and it can take into account more things than we can. It’s important to understand that relationship and just let go within it.
Of course we can avoid it, or hide a little, but it will eventually catch up with us.
So, in the dream, I have figured out how I can contend with those energies that can easily overwhelm me and prevent me from doing what I’m supposed to be doing (in terms of how I’m living at that moment). So I have to shift my attention.
What I do is I shift my attention to being the type of person who is able to postpone this inevitable catching up. I do this by leaving fliers behind me as I go. These fliers say certain things that signify that I know something else is going on as I proceed through life. I’m also able to touch people, as if in touching them I can change the note just a bit so that the force doesn’t have as much speed or way with me.
I can stay ahead of it that way. There is a tension that exists when I look back or think about the condition that I’m in, but that tension seems to fall away if I put my attention upon leaving inflections behind and touching people.
My observation is this: The imagery shows me in the outer world, but I’m observing myself from a higher place and can see that I’m unable to function on my own. I’m barely getting by, but I’m able to maintain because I let my energy clear the environment. I stay just ahead of the collective outer forces.
The meaning is: I’m being shown how I must be, within myself, to exist in the outer world.
The subsequent dream indicates that if I touch something in any way, even if it’s indirectly, I have an effect on it – something has been changed.
So, in this dream I have some tillable acreage. A neighbor has a lease on a large section of land that borders my property. He’s an expert farmer. Because he’s located next door, or has a direct connection to my property, he is allowed to exert an influence and effect over my outcome in terms of how I’m farming.
The meaning here is: We are all interconnected. To know that is to have an effect upon what transpires.
This is another way of portraying the depth of the human heart, only in this case there seems to be an assumption on my part that I don’t know exactly what I’m doing (the other farmer is the expert, not me). So it shows me tending to rely on the judgment of another who has more insight.
I don’t seem to understand yet that I am he, and he is I. Perhaps I can get this understanding when I become “less than the dust at the teacher’s feet” as the saying goes. Or when I realize that my neighbor’s freedom begins where mine ends, in terms of the personal notion of things, as I come to see everything as being intertwined, interconnected, and I’m able to simultaneously touch and be touched.
